April 1, 2015 • 49 mins
Why did an exceptional group of ex-patriot, 19th-century female sculptors become known as a "white, marmorean flock"? Cristen and Caroline discuss their artistic sojourns to Italy and what it meant to be a female sculptor at that time.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you From how Supports
dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
and I'm Kristen, and we're continuing our art Week, Art
History Week, Art Her Story, Her Story, Yes, thank you,
Art her Story week by talking about a group of
(00:26):
lady sculpture says well, I guess that's redundant lady sculptors
or sculpture says called the White Memorian Flock. They themselves
did not pick this name. And honestly, you know, I'm
way more familiar with expatriot writers and painters who went
to Italy and France in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries than I am with sculptors. And so when I
(00:49):
saw a blog post this was at the end of
Over at the Toast a few months ago by Lindsay
Lynch about the White Marmorian Flock, I really had no idea,
no idea what she was talking about. But it turns
out it's this amazing group of women who definitely deserve
our attention, especially during all his Story week, um, and
(01:10):
especially because men of their time their contemporaries dismissed them
completely right off the bat. Yeah, and while we could
have done an episode just focusing on women in sculpture
in general, and perhaps we'll circle back to that. We
really wanted to spend time focused on this particular group
(01:30):
of women because it's such an incredible snapshot of not
only art at a time, but also women's position in society.
What what it kind of took to be ambitious and
for these women, it took leaving the United States and
going to Italy. So first off, Caroline, let's just answer
(01:52):
the question of what was this white Marmorian flock? And
should we point out what Marmorian means? Because here's the thing.
I'm going to be really honest with our listeners for
a moment, even though this is embarrassing. The entire time
I was researching this up until this morning, I was
reading it as Memorian and just assuming, like, oh, white
(02:15):
Memorian memories that they were talking about them having breasts. No, no,
totally wrong word. Well, we're going to get into the
full story of where this name came from, so don't worry.
But basically Memorian means like like marble of marble, and
once I read that definition, it made so much sense. Yeah,
(02:36):
so this was a name that was given to a
specific group of nineteenth century American expatriot ladies working in
the neo classical style in Italy, mostly Florence, a little
bit Rome. Um. But don't, yeah, don't get too excited
about how unique and different the name is, because it
was totally meant as a dismissive moniker. So first let's
(02:59):
provide a little bit of general sculpture context. This is
coming from the met that talks about how America's first
acknowledged school of professional sculptures as they described it, got
their start in Italy. And this was really starting in
the late eighteen twenties and lasting throughout the nineteenth century,
(03:21):
This pattern of aspiring sculptors heading to Italy, like you said,
mostly in Florence and Rome because there were tons of
marble quarries, there are lots of skilled and affordable craftsmen
and carvers, as well as leading European sculpture mentors and
models who would pose nude I mean. And they were
(03:42):
also going back to the birthplace of this neo classical art,
right yeah, and being the birthplace of this classical Greek
art that they were looking at. There was plenty of
all Renaissance art contemporary are all around them that could
help provide inspiration and ideas for what they themselves wanted
to do. But by the mid eighteen seventies, the popularity
(04:04):
of this particular American neo classical sculpture movement had started
to wane. But that doesn't mean that, you know, they
just gave up and came home. There were definitely a
huge number of artists still in Italy. But we are
talking about those sculptures is specifically today. Yeah, that first
quote unquote school of women's sculptures arose around this woman,
(04:27):
Harriet Good Hugh Hosmer, and they took advantage of the
same great art and sculpture environment in Italy. And it's
also worth noting too that these women couldn't just you know,
trot down to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and gaze
it some sculptures to get inspiration because those museums didn't
exist before the nineteenth century. So they were like, well,
(04:49):
we gotta pack up and make it to Italy somehow,
and following the footsteps of Harriet Right and some of
these women include Edmonia Lewis, Emma Stebbens, Louise Land and Whitney,
Margaret Foley, Florence Freeman, and Vinny Reem. And while of
course there were more women both in sculpture and painting. Uh,
(05:09):
these are some of the big names that come up
again and again when you talk about this specific group
of women and why they're neat. And this is pointed
out by Lindsay lynch Over in her post at the Toast.
She wrote, in an age where taking up drawing was
considered an admirable means to charm your way into marriage,
these women ran off to Rome and created big gas
(05:30):
sculptures with their hands, a chisel and a literal ton
of marble. Yeah. And then that also points out that
they quote broke new ground through their independent lifestyles and
an emphasis on career over marriage and motherhood. And so,
since we don't have time in this podcast to discuss
in detail every single one of those artists that you
(05:51):
just mentioned, Caroline, we're going to really focus on three
of those names, Harriet Hosmer and Monia Lewis and Vinny Reem.
And to kick things off, we got to talk about
Harriet because out of all of these women, she was
the most accomplished and the most famous at the time. Yeah,
So Harriet arrives in Italy in eighteen fifty two, and
three years later she travels to Rome to study with
(06:13):
English sculptor John Gibson. And she really became one of
the most important American Neo classical sculptures period, not just
a woman sculptor. And she was central to this whole
white memorian flock that a misogynist author would talk about later.
And we'll get to we'll get to that guy later.
But you know, she sounds pretty freaking cool. At least
(06:36):
according to a letter that Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote in
eighteen fifty four, she said, I should mention too, miss Hosmer,
the young American sculptures who was a great pet of
mine and Robert's, and who emancipates the eccentric life of
a perfectly quote emancipated female from all shadow of blame
by the purity of hers. She lives here all alone
(06:56):
at twenty two dines and breakfast at the cafe, is
precisely as a young man would, works from six o'clock
in the morning till night, as a great artist must,
and this with an absence of pretension and simplicity of
manners which accord rather with the childish dimples in her
rosy cheeks than with her broad forehead and high aims.
So I mean, I love hearing that that she was
(07:18):
such a great character that people considered her dedicated to
her art despite or because of her gender. It didn't matter.
She was in there doing what she wanted to do. Yeah,
there is this one photograph of her standing next to
She's up on a platform standing next to this massive,
larger than life sculpture that she's working on, and she's
(07:40):
so tiny next to it. And of course she's wearing
you know, traditional nineteenth century women's dress. She's in a
dress and with her hair all done up and everything.
But there she is standing next to this massive sculpture,
which note she did not sculpture that giant thing by hand.
That's where these at aillion uh craftsmen would come in.
(08:03):
She would make the model, and this was what all
the sculptures would be doing. You make the model and
then you hand it off to a massive team who
would then do the do the work of Ye, she's
ling it out. Well, some of this work that she
did featured and a lot of it featured heroic women
who's suffering then renders them sympathetic. So one of her
(08:25):
most famous is the figure of Zenobia, who's the third
century queen captured by the Romans. And she sculpted Zenobia
as this proud, calm, steady, silent woman who's walking in chains,
but she's still majestic and proud despite her surrender. Yeah,
and then if we look at this bust of Medusa,
(08:47):
who is a familiar figure to us from mythology. She
was a great beauty then turned into a monster by
a jealous goddess and thus gets the crown of snakes.
And she sculptured though as this calm, beautiful woman who
just kind of happens to have a nest of snakes
hanging out on her head. And in a post over
at the Hood Museum where this this bust is housed,
(09:12):
they talk about how there is this neo classical restraint
in the piece, as is common for that kind of
artwork at the time, but also an uncommon emotionality and
expressiveness in this bust um through her parted lips and
also the pose of her head. And they suggest that
(09:34):
she's beautiful but hideous at the same time because of
the snakes. And perhaps this was Hosmer's commentary on perceptions
towards women at the time of that double blind between
the beautiful and what would be deemed hideous. And you
could see that too with zenobia and chains. Hello, I
mean women still didn't have the boat talk about some chains. Well,
(09:55):
that's right, And I mean entire papers have been written
about our next statue, which is Beatrice Sensei Um and
this was the sixteenth century woman condemned to death for
killing the father who had raped her um. And just
the fact that she is sculpted as this peaceful prisoner.
She's asleep on her prison bench holding beads. I think
(10:18):
it's a rosary. She's about to be put to death
for this horrible crime, and just sort of that duality
of extreme violence and pain with this peaceful image of
a woman who she's it's almost like she's done the
right thing and she knows she's done the right thing.
She did what she had to do, but she's going
to be put to death for it. Yeah, if you
(10:38):
were to see the sculpture out of context, like not
knowing the backstory, you would have no idea the kind
of violence in the background that's going on. And she
was a feminist, not surprisingly who did support the suffrage
is cause, and people around her often noted her quote
(10:59):
un inventional behavior, not just the fact that she was
such a prestigious sculptor at the time, but she also
I mean the very fact that, for instance, Beatrice Sensei
was done on commission and she was making money, actively
seeking out patrons to make money for her work was considered,
(11:19):
I mean, rather unladylike. But this was a woman who
was also raised by her father, her mother, and I
think her sister or other siblings had died, so she
was raised by her father to be super active in outdoorsy.
He had her climbing trees, he had her riding horses
and learning how to be sort of a person outside
of the house. And so a lot of people commented
(11:40):
on that. British artist Frederick Layton said Hosmer is the queerest,
best natured little chap possible, and echoing that, feminist Bessie
Rayner Park said she's the funniest little creature, not at
all coarse, rough or slangy, but like a little boy.
And that's what you see over and over again. People
who talk about Hosmer essentially call her like a global chap.
She's she's like a guy. She's like a little boy,
(12:02):
uh jokey, little you know, tomboy, running around making art,
riding horses, enjoying the outdoors, becoming one of the best
American neo classical sculptors of the time. Big deal, big deal.
But you know, people also hone in on her sexuality too.
This was a woman who was able to, once she
moved over to Florence in Rome, live more openly, and
(12:23):
a lot of her letters of the time reflect that.
And she referred to one of her romantic partners as
her wife, and she called herself another romantic partner's hubby.
You know, I think this was something that a lot
of the women and men too who went to Europe
during this time experienced. It was more of an open lifestyle.
You were away from that oppressive feeling in America. Well,
(12:46):
next we're going to talk about Edmonia Lewis Um, whose
birth name significantly was Wildfire Um. And there's not a
ton of scholarship out there about her, but she's a
really important figure because she's often cited as the first
professional African American female sculptor, who also ended up heading
(13:09):
over to Italy, where her work flourished. Yeah, and it
is important to mention her because even though there isn't
a ton of stuff out there about her life, you know,
and her early years and her later years are sort
of in obscurity, this whole white Memorian flock was definitely
not literally white. She was a major part of this movement,
(13:29):
and she's both of African and Native American descent, something
that really played into her sculpture as well. And so
Louis studied at Oberlin thanks to financial support from her brother,
and trained to be a teacher, and her brother was
really encouraging of her education. He basically said, this is
how you're going to live a life that isn't basically
in a shack. You were going to make something of yourself.
(13:51):
But during her time in Oberlin, she was actually accused
of poisoning two of her classmates, and this fact of
her life's almost is as well known as her sculpture, unfortunately,
and she was captured and beaten by a white mob,
but the charges against her were eventually dropped. And it's
after this point that she moves to Boston and encounters
(14:12):
the abolitionist community. Yeah, and it's there that she befriends
sculptor Edward Brackett, who ends up becoming her teacher, and
she starts earning some small commercial success thanks to bus
of people like William Lloyd Garrison, notable abolitionists of the time,
as well as John Brown. But there's kind of an
(14:33):
icky scideivist as well, because abolitionists, for all of their
great intentions, obviously still used her as an example of
what African Americans could be capable of if given the chance,
and this earned Louis national and international press coverage. So yeah,
(14:53):
so it's it's great that she got so much attention,
but it is kind of your right gross that she
was used. She was propped up as this example of
what black people in America should be or could be,
kind of an exception to the rules exactly. Well, so
after this, she goes on to earn her first major
commercial success thanks to a bust of Colonel Robert gould Shaw.
(15:15):
After this point, she's able to move to Italy. She's
earned enough money and in Rome she encounters other female
artists and she gets to enjoy more social and artistic freedom.
She could fully participate in the international market for sculpture
and not just rely on abolitionist patronage because, like you said,
abolitionist community and Boston great intentions want to, you know,
(15:38):
free African Americans of the bonds of slavery. But she
was still kind of under their thumb if they were
the ones giving her all of the commissions. So in
Italy she could kind of make her own way. And
in eighteen sixties seven she creates her most famous work,
Forever Free, which is a sculpture of a black man
and woman leaving the bonds of slavery. And nine years
later she she shows her last major work, which is
(16:01):
the Death of Cleopatra at the Philadelphia Exposition. Yeah, and apparently,
I mean the significance of both of those pieces is
worth mentioning too, because Forever Free was sculpted to commemorate
the ratification of the thirteenth Amendment, so clearly there's a
lot of personal investment in that piece. But then when
(16:24):
it comes to the Death of Cleopatra, which depicts Cleopatra
sitting on her throne um, that was really her effort
to secure her place as a significant artist, to prove
that she was as good as all of the rest,
and she did, because she's definitely someone noteworthy in this
(16:46):
entire group of women, as is Vinny Reem, who studied
with sculptor Clark Mills in Washington, d C. Luigi Majoli
in Rome, and Leon Banant in Paris. So Luigi. She
studied with Luigi Luigi um not Mario. But in eighteen
sixty six, it's just eighteen years old. All Vinny here
(17:07):
was picked by Congress to sculpt a statue of Abraham Lincoln,
the significance being that she became the first female artist
commissioned to create a work of art for the federal government.
And she carves it in Rome out of Carrera marble,
and it's unveiled in d C in eighteen seventy one,
and it's gorgeous. You can you can see it on
(17:28):
the Google if you'd like to. And there's this quote
by then New York Legislator James Brooks on the Lincoln statue,
which starts off so glowing and then takes a turn
that sums up one of the main reasons we even
wanted to do this specific episode, So Brooks says, the
parthenon the Vatican, the great museums of Paris, Berlin, and
(17:52):
London show us no marble monuments. Bus North statues the
finger work of the fair sex, while here in this
rotundo we now see the equal rights of women are
not at the ballot box, but in the pencil, the chisel,
the artistic instruments to perpetuate the human form divine. Oh,
(18:19):
you were so close, James Brook. You you had me,
You had me until until, not until. Yeah, I'm I'm
not a sexist person, but but you're really better at
making sandwiches than decisions. Well, at least she can make
pretty things, which is basically his attitude. Well, he was
(18:39):
at least kinder in his view of women's artistic capability
than a lot of his male contemporaries, who were like, oh,
I mean they're kind of posers. Well, I mean, even
Vinnie's husband wasn't so great. So there's this. It's not
that she wasn't working during this time, but there's a
forty year, forty year, four decade gap between the Lincoln
(19:01):
unveiling and the completion of a statue of Iowa Governor
Samuel Jordan Kirkwood in the In the meantime, she had
been focusing on her life as a wife and a mother.
And that's fine, great, hooray, wife and mother. However, that's
because her husband, Lieutenant Richard Haxey, imposed restrictions on her sculpting.
Oh Hoxie, Oh oh Hoxy, Why you gotta be like that? Well,
(19:25):
now that we've spotlighted these three important women, we want
to kind of go back now and talk about how
this supposed flock came to be associated together and how
that fits into the broader culture regarding women an artistic
(19:45):
ambition at the time. Okay, so we named some names
for you. We talked a little bit about the history
behind women traveling to Europe to become artists, sculptors in particular,
and now we want to talk about how these women
even them together. I mean, obviously they're individuals. Obviously this
was not like a sculpting sorority. You know, they had
different interests and paths in life, but they also had
(20:08):
a lot in common in terms of what drew them
to Italy and what kept them there. And this is
coming from a paper by Sarah Fust Parrot called Networking
in Italy, Charlotte Cushman and the White Marmorian Flock. And
so Charlotte Cushman was one of America's first big name actresses,
if not the first American big name actress, and she
(20:28):
attracted a ton of female artists, not just sculptors, writers
and painters to to Italy in the eighteen fifties through
the eighteen seventies. So in eighteen fifty two, Cushman first
travels to Rome with Harriet Hosmer, and she ended up
connecting Hosmer with potential patrons and helped her out of
a bunch of money trouble, the awkward part being that
(20:50):
Kushman's romantic partner would temporarily leave her for Hosmer in
eighteen fifty four. But romantic things aside, Cushman had a
lot to do with with helping and supporting a out
of the sculptures and artists around her. Yeah, she flexed
her muscle constantly to advocate on behalf of sculptures and
partner Emma Stebbins, for instance, And so we have her
(21:12):
to thank for the Bethesda Fountain in New York Central
Park that Stevens sculpted. And she also kept in touch
with sculpture Florence Freeman's dubious mother via letters to ease
her mind about Freeman of being in Italy. And she
also organized a group purchase of one of Edmonia Lewis's
sculptures to help keep her working. And when I was
(21:35):
reading about Charlotte Cushman and her hardcore advocacy for women
supporting women specifically, I thought about our Shine Theory podcast.
I thought about len In. I mean, this was really
she was kind of the original Sheryl Sandberg with this
old school lean in group, just being really focused, singularly
(21:57):
focused on promoting other mail artists work and pulling strings
abroad to wealthy patrons saying hey you, okay, listen, I'm
Charlotte Kushman. I'm a really big deal. I know this sculptor.
You should buy one of her pieces to put in
your mansion. Why don't you do it? Andy'd be like, Oh,
that's a wonderful idea. Charlotte, well yeah, I mean she's
(22:18):
she's like lean In with a little bit of romantic
drama in there as well. Time to time. She was
also kind of in love with a lot of these
women also also just kind of came and went to
to some degree. I mean, Charlotte Kushman was, I mean,
she was in a pretty pretty plum pocisition. It seemed
like she was well you know, what Parent points out
is that Kushman was evidence that ambitious, artistic women didn't
(22:42):
have to sacrifice happiness and fulfillment in the domestic sphere
in favor of a career. And you know, Charlotte Cushman
is this masculine figure who'd never married, and she maintained
a quote unquote cherished celibacy. Wink wink, nudge, nudge. But
so instead of having to sacrifice one for the other,
she says, you know, we should band together. And and
(23:02):
she encouraged them to do this so that they could
take on tasks for one another that were traditionally delegated
two men to do. So, Hey, if you are out
working all night, I'll cook dinner for all of us.
Or if you're doing this, I'll help you know, purchase supplies.
And this really was not an unusual setup romantic relationships
or not. This is something that Vivian green Fried, Vanderbilt
(23:26):
art history professor, wrote about um in looking at the
relationships of these women. She said, nineteenth century white middle
class women often form their own gendered communities out of
necessity in a world comprising discreete male and female spheres,
composing a closed and intimate female world in which a
young girl like Hosmer grew towards womanhood under the tutelage
(23:47):
of an older woman like Kushman. But also interesting to
me too about Cushman was that I would have assumed
that she would have been this threatening figure to socialites
at the time because she was living such kind of
a transgressive kind of life, But it was just the opposite.
She was so beloved for the fact that she legitimated
(24:10):
a lot of American theatrical work at the time by
becoming that first big name stage actress, because previously only
British theater was considered true theater, and the Chicago Times
at one point described her as an ambassadress for America,
living abroad, showing Italians all these fancy people, because back then,
(24:35):
of course European culture was considered the culture, and so
they were like, oh, it's great that we have Cushman
over here, you know, kind of repping us to show that, hey, Americans,
they aren't so bad now. I thought the exact same
thing when I was reading that paper about Kushman. I
was just waiting for the whole thing of like and
everybody in America hated her too. Because she lived in
(24:55):
an alternative lifestyle. But yeah, it was exactly the opposite.
People were so excited that we had women like Kushman
and Harriet Hosmer kind of yeah, like you said, repping
for us that to show that, hey, we have cultured too,
We can we can provide high quality entertainment, art and culture. Um,
(25:16):
we don't just have to rely on people from other
countries to bring it to us. But at the same time,
women in America had to rely on going to another country,
specifically Italy at the time, in order to pursue their
artistic ambitions. And I was so pleased to learn that
the character Amy in Luisa may Alcott's Little Women was
(25:38):
based on her sister Mary, who pulled a Memorian flock.
She went to its study art in Italy because of
this whole trend that was happening, and it makes sense
Little Women came out in eighteen eighteen sixty eight. So,
I mean, if if you weren't familiar with this, you
actually might have been if you've read Little Women. Well,
(25:58):
I mean, but speaking of literature and characters in literature,
one character does play a large part in this because
you have to keep in mind that you know, traveling
to Italy wasn't something that just anybody and everybody got
to do, and you would often rely on literature to
kind of tell you what was going on, and novels
were even used to sort of guide books, because once
the upper crust read a particularly colorful novel about Italy
(26:21):
or France or whatever, they would basically follow that character's
footsteps through the town. And so Cushman's contemporaries actually associated
her with this character named Karine from the eighteen o
seven book karn or Italy. And in the book, the
Italian Karrine creates all of this amazing art through divine intervention,
which is interesting, and she ends up being crowned as
(26:43):
the best that Italian civilization has to offer, so sort
of a Cushman but in the art world. Um, but
she ultimately suffers for her success because you know, she
like flew too close to the sun. As a lady person,
Cushman didn't. She was super successful. She was very smart
with her money and where she spent it, and she
(27:04):
was able to free a lot of the other women
who followed her to Italy to pursue their own interests.
And because there was a lot of American investment and
interest in proving our cultural worth. At the time, women
traveling to Italy was acceptable. It was like, okay, well,
(27:24):
if you're going to do that, if you're going to
represent as well, I guess go and make your art
if you must, little woman. And in that paper, Parent
writes the very fact that many American women were pursuing
careers in Italy was interpreted by their contemporaries as an
indication of the expansiveness and vigor of American culture. So
not only was it okay, it was encouraged, and it
was also too though, as Parrot goes on to talk about,
(27:46):
indicative of the inadequacy of artistic training available in the US.
But this was really this was an interesting twist all
of it. We still believed that the character of American
womanhood was suppure ear to any other. So there was
kind of this our girls versus their girls thing going
on between America and Italy, where we were like, Okay,
(28:08):
you guys have all of this cultural superiority, Yes, but
we have superior women. So if we send them over
and then we combine the two, we win big time. Yeah,
it's a little bit of like Rockham stock'em Art World edition. Well,
but so what's up with this moniker? You know, we've
we've been talking about the more Marian flock. We touched
on what more Marian means and what it doesn't mean.
(28:30):
It doesn't mean boobs today. I'm sure boobs are part
of it, the part of why they were getting hated on.
But the moniker is definitely evidence of the way these
women were collectively across the board dismissed by a lot
of their contemporaries. And it starts with Scarlet Letter author
Nathaniel Hawthorne. So Hawthorne goes over to Italy with his wife,
(28:52):
who herself is a painter, and based on his experiences there,
he writes the novel A Marble Fawn in eighteen ft nine,
and that's based on his encounters with people including Hosmer
Lander and fellow sculptor William Wetmore Story, who sounds like
a wet blanket to play off of his middle name.
But it's this romanticized view of Americans seeking artistic training abroad,
(29:16):
and the plot involves female characters living outside of social
norms gasp. But he based his innocent character Hilda on
Hosmer interestingly, and the male protagonist Kenyon on story and
these characters in the book fall in love eventually, but
in real life that was not so much the case.
Yeah a, because Hosmer was likely a lesbian right and
(29:39):
be story in real life pretty much dismissed her. But
it's kind of clear in the way that he does
this that he's just completely intimidated by her talent. So
at one point he writes, Miss Hosmer is also to
say the word very willful and too independent by half,
and it's mixed up with a set whom I do
not and I can therefore do very little for her.
(30:03):
And he goes on to say she may or may
not have inventive powers as an artist, but if she
have will not, she'd be the first woman story. I
wanted to throw my laptop at a window when I
read that. I would she not be the first women
oh story, fighting words. Yeah. He describes as Mer as
(30:27):
one of the emancipated females who dwell there in heavenly unity,
which sounds amazing things well seriously, and continuing that theme,
he wrote that she would have the Romans know that
a Yankee girl can do anything she pleases. Walk alone,
ride her horse alone, and laugh at their rules. Again,
sounds amazing. So she can walk and ride a horse
(30:48):
that's so great by herself, by herself. And not only
is there that tone of insecurity, but there's also a
little bit of tone of like, I'm trying to save
her from these lesbians, and she just will not come
away with me. But author John Carlos wrote writing about
this relationship between Hawthorne Hasmer and author Henry James says
(31:08):
William's stories patronizing judgment of Heismer betrays his own fears
that Hosmer's artistic achievement and talent might be superior to
his own, as most modern artistorians agree. They were now
speaking of though the marble font. We mentioned the two
the two of the main characters, Hilda and Kenyan, but
(31:28):
there's also another female protagonist, Miriam, who was a little
bit of a mysterious figure, and she is based on
real life woman Margaret Fuller, who was an early American
feminist part of the Transcendental movement, also the first female
American foreign correspondent, who also while she was in Italy,
(31:50):
got pregnant, ended up marrying the guy and then on
their way back to the US died in a shipwreck,
and her death at the time was seen as proof
of the rash decision it would be for a woman
to pursue her artistic ambition. She was a cautionary tale
that Miriam was well. I mean, it's hard to believe
(32:11):
that Margaret Fuller's even real because her story just reads
like it's straight out of a novel from this period,
which is why she was Her life was such fodder
for Hawthorne. I mean, here's a woman who essentially lived
her life as what we would think of as a spinster,
goes to Italy, meets this younger guy who's like cut,
nothing going for him. I mean, how many of these
people did be dating college Like he's got nothing going
(32:31):
for him, but she's just like, you're hot, Like I
haven't been hanging out with dudes for a while, so like,
let's do this. They do it, gets pregnant, gets in
a shipwreck, all is lost, becomes the cautionary Yeah, it's
it's I'm people of that era. I'm sure they were like,
which I'm sure wouldn't rage her if she knew that,
(32:52):
I'm sure. But but so anyway, in this book that
was swirling around all of these um sculptors and sculptures.
Is Hawthorne used the term Marmorian to mean, you know,
resembling Marble, as in smoothness or hardness. But that term
is been taken by Henry James and applied to this
(33:16):
group of lady sculptors, and he definitely, you guys, meant
it to be dismissive. After all, he included the reference
in his book about William Wetmore's story, who, as we've
already established, was none too fond of these women, including Hosmer.
And after all, she is the only lady sculptor that
James mentioned in his book by name. Yeah, so the
(33:39):
whole White Memorian flock thing comes from this passage in
Henry James's book that goes a leg this stories. Patty is,
of course Miss Harriet Hosmer, the most eminent member of
that strange sisterhood of American ladies sculptors who at one
time settled upon the Seven Hills in a White Memorian flock.
(34:02):
Their rise, their prosperity, their subsistence are in presence of
some of the widely scattered monuments of their reign. Things
likely to lead us into bipaths, queer, and crooked, so
just all sorts of like really awesome things to say
about women. But yeah, he's he's dismissing these women as birds. Yeah,
(34:23):
like they're just they're just white, cold, lesbian birds that
I hate and resent. And he also mentions at Monia Lewis,
though not by name, when he writes one of the Sisterhood,
if I'm not mistaken, was a negress whose color, picturesquely
contrasting with that of her plastic material, was the pleading
(34:43):
agent of her fame. Yeah, and if you keep in
mind that Henry James, you know, was not too fond
of women in general who weren't inside the home. I mean,
in other books of his he drew these unspoken parallels
between female copyists, the women who would, for instance, go
to museums or galleries and paint what they saw and
(35:05):
prostitutes good grief, I know, good grief. So so Hawthorne
and James obviously did not hold these women in terribly
high esteem, although I would be willing to guess that
Hawthorne was like a little more okay with that, I
would hope. So, considering that his wife Sophia was an artist,
although once they got married, she for the most part
kind of had to pack away her canvases. Yeah, I've
(35:26):
gotta love that stuff. But so, what was the what
was the general consensus about these ladies. Well, like you
said that they were one monolithic group, they're kind of
lumped together rather than being seen as individuals with individual talent.
And a lot of the articles also focused on personalities, appearing,
(35:51):
and a lot of articles also focused on personalities, appearances,
behaviors rather than their work, which is something that we
still see so often today in profiles of accomplished women. Yeah,
big time. How many magazine articles have you read about
a woman that starts off describing what she's wearing and
what she's eating? So many, especially if she is really attractive,
(36:13):
conventionally attractive and finn it'll start off with what she's eating.
If she's not as conventionally attractive, probably what she's wearing. Yeah, yeah,
I love it. Um. Well. So in eighteen sixties six
freelance correspondent Henry Referred reporting back on this Mormorian flock
departs from the bird reference and describes them as a
(36:33):
fair constellation of twelve stars of greater or lesser magnitude
who shed their soft and humanizing influence on a profession
which has done so much for the refinement and civilization
of man. I mean that doesn't sound so condescending, but
it is still. I mean, it's limited. Obviously, they're they're
(36:53):
this discreet constellation of twelve stars and that's it. Yeah, yeah,
why why go and go into it any further? And
we could also say that about American writer and art
critic Henry Tuckerman, who, in his six hundred page volume
about art, dedicated just five pages to all of these
American female sculptors. His take that the public appreciation of
(37:18):
their arts seemed to come from quote national deference to
and sympathy with the sex, and from quote a lack
of understanding about art in general. So basically, if you
appear to appreciate any of these sculptures that are being
created by these women, you are probably just feel a
little bad for them because they're women, and how nice
for them that they're struggling, or you just don't get art.
(37:41):
And I want to give him this a tiny past
because his six hundred page volume was coming out in
eighteen sixty seven. But still, Puckerman, uh, pretty and he
was also to living in Italy, so he was right
in the midst of this and still thumbed his knows
at these transgressive women as they were often considered by
(38:04):
the wealthy travelers who would go through these Italian roots
to see all these studios um and the other sites abroad,
who would always want to look into these Mermorian flock
studios to see like, well, what does it even look
like for a woman to be working like this? Yeah,
because you know, I mentioned earlier that a lot of
the novels of the era were used almost as travel guides,
(38:26):
and this is also true for Hawthorne's The Marble Fon
that he described so intricately all of these different sites
and artworks and people in his book that when American
tourists would come to Italy, they would either have in
hand or purchase a copy of his book that had
places where you could insert postcards and pictures when you
(38:49):
went to the exact same spot. Oh my god, it's
like they eat prey, love twitter. It is. And you know,
by a large the medium in general was considered inappropriate
for women of this time, like painting and sketching. That's
totally cool, except if you're Henry James, and you think
that women who sketch in the museum or prostitutes. But um,
(39:12):
it's essentially the fact that they're using these difficult and
dirty materials and they have to exert themselves to manipulate
the stone. Um that they ended up inhabiting this essentially
masculine realm. And this made a lot of the contemporaries,
the artist contemporaries uneasy. Yeah, there was a lot of
scandal actually that broke out, for instance, around Hosmer's Zenobia sculpture,
(39:37):
because it received all of this critical acclaim. But then
there was this backlash among some people who said, well,
she has all of these these Italian workmen who are
doing the chiseling for her, which was the case for
male sculptures at the time as well. There was a
lot of resistance just to even even allowing women to
succeed in this field, right exactly because after all, you know,
(40:00):
you mentioned the commission thing earlier, it was totally unfeminine
for women to try to pursue a commission. Um. But
the artist did a lot of them did work to
counter this whole negative perception by portraying themselves as that
whole Ambassador to Europe thing, ambassador. Yes, The ambassador asked like, no, no, no,
(40:21):
we're not. We're not trying to further our own careers.
We're just trying to be ambassadors to America. We're women
were communal minded, um, and we to have to mention
that there was probably some latent homophobia going on as well,
because a lot of these women were living in kind
of lesbian arrangements. The euphemism for at the time was
(40:43):
a Boston marriage, which was really exemplified by Anne Whitney,
who was the sculpture at the time. She was older
and not as successful as a Harriet and hose Mur
for instance, but she and her partner Adeline Manning lived
in a quote unquote Boston marriage or decades and when
Manning died or I guess after Okay, so Manning died first,
(41:06):
then Whitney died, and they wanted to be they were
supposed to be buried next to each other as well,
and kind of had to fight for that. Well, Manning's
family ended up, yeah, making sure that that happened, that
they were buried together, but partners, well, yeah, And so
I mean, not only were these women living outside the
normal bounds of matrimony and motherhood, but they were also
(41:26):
pursuing careers and living in these situations with other women,
which yes, sometimes they were so called Boston marriages, and
sometimes they were all just living together to do what
Kushman envisioned and sort of support one another. And you know,
the reports that came back of these women living together
in a spinster like fashion were always okay. It's always
okay if they're just older women who never married and
(41:49):
their spinsters, and that's fine. Even those romantic friendships that
we've talked before, especially in our episode on women's colleges,
like that was still okay. But once you were actually
refer drying to another woman as your wife, or saying
that you were her hubby in Hosmer's case, and actually
displaying any public displays of affection or actual sexual desires,
(42:11):
that was not okay. And so this group was just
sort of a microcosm of everything that made people so
uncomfortable at the time, especially with women. But I do
think that we women today have a lot that we
can learn from this group of artists that I don't
feel like we can call a white memorial flog because
(42:31):
it was a dismissive term for them at the time,
because I mean, they really dug their heels in and
got so into the concept of the importance of networking,
supporting each other, not allowing jealousy to get in the
way of each other's ambition and career achievements. It's really
inspirational in a lot of ways. It is inspirational and
(42:54):
I'd love to sculpt something, but I just never took
that class. Caroline, you still can get a ticket to
a pick up a copy of the Marble Phone and go.
I know I need to. I'll be your patron. I
have no money, but I'll be your spiritual Thanks. Okay, Well,
(43:14):
we are really curious to hear from listeners about this.
I'm wondering if there are any sort of expat artistic
types listening to this podcast right now in a far
away place. I know we have some some traveling listeners,
because I know that this was also inspirational for me
in terms of the importance of getting outside of your
own backyard every now and then and how and how
(43:37):
invigorating that can be creatively as well. So let us
know your thoughts about sculpture. Women aren't ambition and kind
of the conflict that poses sometimes to women's roles and quotes.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
email address. You can tweet us at mom stuff podcasts,
(43:57):
or messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of
messages that are with you right now. I have a
letter here from Katie about our slut shaming episode. She says, well,
I don't have a grand scheme to rid our culture
of slut shaming. I do have an anecdote that y'all
might find interesting. When Rush Limbaugh made his infamous slut
(44:18):
comments about Sandra Fluke and birth control, I happened to
be a recent college grad working in the DC office
of a female Republican senator, and I was one of
the three people who answered most of the phone calls
after the Sandra Fluke comments. We received some of the
most hate filled, verbally abusive phone calls I have ever heard.
People called in from all over the country to call
(44:39):
us the senator's whors, sluts, and a thousand other things
that I'd rather not relay. While it was office policy
that we could hang up on any verbally abusive caller
after eight hours of hundreds of abusive calls, and they
were pretty much constant for days after those comments. We
were all pretty shell shocked. Even now three years later,
(45:00):
it's one of the worst working weeks I've ever had.
No one in our office supported rush Lamba's comments, including
the Senator, but so much ire was taken out on us.
Now I realized that the people who work in the
offices of senators and other elected officials are there to
facilitate communication between the official and constituents. But my advice
or please for anyone who chooses to call on an
(45:21):
issue is please, please please remember that the person on
the other end of the phone is a person. They're
an actual human being. This is broader than the reactionary
splut shaming or verbally abuse of calls we got on
that one issue, but it's something that played out over
and over again in my time there. A really good
rule of thumb is to ask yourself, would I talk
like this if I was looking at this person's face
(45:44):
Most of the time, the shouty, sweary name calling would
never happen in person. A phone call shouldn't be any difference,
And I'm pretty sure this holds for YouTube comments too. Anyway,
that's my little soapbox moment. For the record, I'd rather
not reclaim the word slut. I just prefer that we
stopped using it all together. So thank you, Katie. Yeah,
we've heard so much about the slut shaming episode and
(46:07):
still are getting letters about it, and same thing with
the podcast Stalking one oh one. And I've got a
letter here from someone I'm going to keep anonymous to
protect her privacy, who writes I was the victim of
a stalker. He was my ex boyfriend. This was pretty
soon after our breakup. I really didn't know who was
stalking me. I would receive daily threatening emails and one
(46:28):
night came home to a rock through the window. I
was rooming with my best friend who owned the house,
and I spoke to the police and he told me
was probably my ex. And somehow I got connected to
a wonderful detective who worked to find the address these
emails for coming from, and he eventually traced them back
to my ex. I told my family in my workplace.
My family blamed me for introducing this man into my life.
(46:51):
Every day I felt guilt, shame, and overall disbelief that
I had gotten myself into situation, and every day my
family reminded me that you should have known better, and
I couldn't take it. For a month, I slept on
a couch at my friend's house. We weren't close because
most of my close friends didn't even want to risk
their own safety by having me there. At work, my
boss wanted me fired. She said I could no longer
(47:13):
perform my work duties due to the fear I had
of my stalker. Oh yeah, and according to her, I
was putting everyone at risk. Luckily, her director let me
work from another office. I went on and got a
temporary restraining order. The police were never able to find
him and give it to him. When I went to
my permanent hearing, he wasn't there and the court said
they could go no further. Once he knew I contacted
the police, he never bothered me again, only left me
(47:34):
a bag at work with pictures and a letter saying
he was moving away. I know I did the right
thing contacting the police, and I'm grateful to the officer
that helped me. I'm ever grateful to my friend who
gave me his couch and only listened. But it's still
a challenge dealing with the shame I feel about the
whole event. Now only a few close friends know what happened.
The event also changed my relationship with my family. I
(47:55):
share it with no one and often wonder if I
pop up somewhere as having filed a restraining order. I'm
also grateful to the few people who didn't judge me
and just supported me. Hopefully I can be that person
to someone else. So I wanted to share that story
because we've heard a lot of things like this, just
to emphasize, like, what really happens in these kinds of situations,
(48:17):
And if you have a friend or a family member,
even an acquaintance who's going through this, I have some
kindness and compassion. So with that, send us your emails.
Mom stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
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(48:40):
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Five
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you From how Supports
dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
and I'm Kristen, and we're continuing our art Week, Art
History Week, Art Her Story, Her Story, Yes, thank you,
Art her Story week by talking about a group of
(00:26):
lady sculpture says well, I guess that's redundant lady sculptors
or sculpture says called the White Memorian Flock. They themselves
did not pick this name. And honestly, you know, I'm
way more familiar with expatriot writers and painters who went
to Italy and France in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries than I am with sculptors. And so when I
(00:49):
saw a blog post this was at the end of
Over at the Toast a few months ago by Lindsay
Lynch about the White Marmorian Flock, I really had no idea,
no idea what she was talking about. But it turns
out it's this amazing group of women who definitely deserve
our attention, especially during all his Story week, um, and
(01:10):
especially because men of their time their contemporaries dismissed them
completely right off the bat. Yeah, and while we could
have done an episode just focusing on women in sculpture
in general, and perhaps we'll circle back to that. We
really wanted to spend time focused on this particular group
(01:30):
of women because it's such an incredible snapshot of not
only art at a time, but also women's position in society.
What what it kind of took to be ambitious and
for these women, it took leaving the United States and
going to Italy. So first off, Caroline, let's just answer
(01:52):
the question of what was this white Marmorian flock? And
should we point out what Marmorian means? Because here's the thing.
I'm going to be really honest with our listeners for
a moment, even though this is embarrassing. The entire time
I was researching this up until this morning, I was
reading it as Memorian and just assuming, like, oh, white
(02:15):
Memorian memories that they were talking about them having breasts. No, no,
totally wrong word. Well, we're going to get into the
full story of where this name came from, so don't worry.
But basically Memorian means like like marble of marble, and
once I read that definition, it made so much sense. Yeah,
(02:36):
so this was a name that was given to a
specific group of nineteenth century American expatriot ladies working in
the neo classical style in Italy, mostly Florence, a little
bit Rome. Um. But don't, yeah, don't get too excited
about how unique and different the name is, because it
was totally meant as a dismissive moniker. So first let's
(02:59):
provide a little bit of general sculpture context. This is
coming from the met that talks about how America's first
acknowledged school of professional sculptures as they described it, got
their start in Italy. And this was really starting in
the late eighteen twenties and lasting throughout the nineteenth century,
(03:21):
This pattern of aspiring sculptors heading to Italy, like you said,
mostly in Florence and Rome because there were tons of
marble quarries, there are lots of skilled and affordable craftsmen
and carvers, as well as leading European sculpture mentors and
models who would pose nude I mean. And they were
(03:42):
also going back to the birthplace of this neo classical art,
right yeah, and being the birthplace of this classical Greek
art that they were looking at. There was plenty of
all Renaissance art contemporary are all around them that could
help provide inspiration and ideas for what they themselves wanted
to do. But by the mid eighteen seventies, the popularity
(04:04):
of this particular American neo classical sculpture movement had started
to wane. But that doesn't mean that, you know, they
just gave up and came home. There were definitely a
huge number of artists still in Italy. But we are
talking about those sculptures is specifically today. Yeah, that first
quote unquote school of women's sculptures arose around this woman,
(04:27):
Harriet Good Hugh Hosmer, and they took advantage of the
same great art and sculpture environment in Italy. And it's
also worth noting too that these women couldn't just you know,
trot down to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and gaze
it some sculptures to get inspiration because those museums didn't
exist before the nineteenth century. So they were like, well,
(04:49):
we gotta pack up and make it to Italy somehow,
and following the footsteps of Harriet Right and some of
these women include Edmonia Lewis, Emma Stebbens, Louise Land and Whitney,
Margaret Foley, Florence Freeman, and Vinny Reem. And while of
course there were more women both in sculpture and painting. Uh,
(05:09):
these are some of the big names that come up
again and again when you talk about this specific group
of women and why they're neat. And this is pointed
out by Lindsay lynch Over in her post at the Toast.
She wrote, in an age where taking up drawing was
considered an admirable means to charm your way into marriage,
these women ran off to Rome and created big gas
(05:30):
sculptures with their hands, a chisel and a literal ton
of marble. Yeah. And then that also points out that
they quote broke new ground through their independent lifestyles and
an emphasis on career over marriage and motherhood. And so,
since we don't have time in this podcast to discuss
in detail every single one of those artists that you
(05:51):
just mentioned, Caroline, we're going to really focus on three
of those names, Harriet Hosmer and Monia Lewis and Vinny Reem.
And to kick things off, we got to talk about
Harriet because out of all of these women, she was
the most accomplished and the most famous at the time. Yeah,
So Harriet arrives in Italy in eighteen fifty two, and
three years later she travels to Rome to study with
(06:13):
English sculptor John Gibson. And she really became one of
the most important American Neo classical sculptures period, not just
a woman sculptor. And she was central to this whole
white memorian flock that a misogynist author would talk about later.
And we'll get to we'll get to that guy later.
But you know, she sounds pretty freaking cool. At least
(06:36):
according to a letter that Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote in
eighteen fifty four, she said, I should mention too, miss Hosmer,
the young American sculptures who was a great pet of
mine and Robert's, and who emancipates the eccentric life of
a perfectly quote emancipated female from all shadow of blame
by the purity of hers. She lives here all alone
(06:56):
at twenty two dines and breakfast at the cafe, is
precisely as a young man would, works from six o'clock
in the morning till night, as a great artist must,
and this with an absence of pretension and simplicity of
manners which accord rather with the childish dimples in her
rosy cheeks than with her broad forehead and high aims.
So I mean, I love hearing that that she was
(07:18):
such a great character that people considered her dedicated to
her art despite or because of her gender. It didn't matter.
She was in there doing what she wanted to do. Yeah,
there is this one photograph of her standing next to
She's up on a platform standing next to this massive,
larger than life sculpture that she's working on, and she's
(07:40):
so tiny next to it. And of course she's wearing
you know, traditional nineteenth century women's dress. She's in a
dress and with her hair all done up and everything.
But there she is standing next to this massive sculpture,
which note she did not sculpture that giant thing by hand.
That's where these at aillion uh craftsmen would come in.
(08:03):
She would make the model, and this was what all
the sculptures would be doing. You make the model and
then you hand it off to a massive team who
would then do the do the work of Ye, she's
ling it out. Well, some of this work that she
did featured and a lot of it featured heroic women
who's suffering then renders them sympathetic. So one of her
(08:25):
most famous is the figure of Zenobia, who's the third
century queen captured by the Romans. And she sculpted Zenobia
as this proud, calm, steady, silent woman who's walking in chains,
but she's still majestic and proud despite her surrender. Yeah,
and then if we look at this bust of Medusa,
(08:47):
who is a familiar figure to us from mythology. She
was a great beauty then turned into a monster by
a jealous goddess and thus gets the crown of snakes.
And she sculptured though as this calm, beautiful woman who
just kind of happens to have a nest of snakes
hanging out on her head. And in a post over
at the Hood Museum where this this bust is housed,
(09:12):
they talk about how there is this neo classical restraint
in the piece, as is common for that kind of
artwork at the time, but also an uncommon emotionality and
expressiveness in this bust um through her parted lips and
also the pose of her head. And they suggest that
(09:34):
she's beautiful but hideous at the same time because of
the snakes. And perhaps this was Hosmer's commentary on perceptions
towards women at the time of that double blind between
the beautiful and what would be deemed hideous. And you
could see that too with zenobia and chains. Hello, I
mean women still didn't have the boat talk about some chains. Well,
(09:55):
that's right, And I mean entire papers have been written
about our next statue, which is Beatrice Sensei Um and
this was the sixteenth century woman condemned to death for
killing the father who had raped her um. And just
the fact that she is sculpted as this peaceful prisoner.
She's asleep on her prison bench holding beads. I think
(10:18):
it's a rosary. She's about to be put to death
for this horrible crime, and just sort of that duality
of extreme violence and pain with this peaceful image of
a woman who she's it's almost like she's done the
right thing and she knows she's done the right thing.
She did what she had to do, but she's going
to be put to death for it. Yeah, if you
(10:38):
were to see the sculpture out of context, like not
knowing the backstory, you would have no idea the kind
of violence in the background that's going on. And she
was a feminist, not surprisingly who did support the suffrage
is cause, and people around her often noted her quote
(10:59):
un inventional behavior, not just the fact that she was
such a prestigious sculptor at the time, but she also
I mean the very fact that, for instance, Beatrice Sensei
was done on commission and she was making money, actively
seeking out patrons to make money for her work was considered,
(11:19):
I mean, rather unladylike. But this was a woman who
was also raised by her father, her mother, and I
think her sister or other siblings had died, so she
was raised by her father to be super active in outdoorsy.
He had her climbing trees, he had her riding horses
and learning how to be sort of a person outside
of the house. And so a lot of people commented
(11:40):
on that. British artist Frederick Layton said Hosmer is the queerest,
best natured little chap possible, and echoing that, feminist Bessie
Rayner Park said she's the funniest little creature, not at
all coarse, rough or slangy, but like a little boy.
And that's what you see over and over again. People
who talk about Hosmer essentially call her like a global chap.
She's she's like a guy. She's like a little boy,
(12:02):
uh jokey, little you know, tomboy, running around making art,
riding horses, enjoying the outdoors, becoming one of the best
American neo classical sculptors of the time. Big deal, big deal.
But you know, people also hone in on her sexuality too.
This was a woman who was able to, once she
moved over to Florence in Rome, live more openly, and
(12:23):
a lot of her letters of the time reflect that.
And she referred to one of her romantic partners as
her wife, and she called herself another romantic partner's hubby.
You know, I think this was something that a lot
of the women and men too who went to Europe
during this time experienced. It was more of an open lifestyle.
You were away from that oppressive feeling in America. Well,
(12:46):
next we're going to talk about Edmonia Lewis Um, whose
birth name significantly was Wildfire Um. And there's not a
ton of scholarship out there about her, but she's a
really important figure because she's often cited as the first
professional African American female sculptor, who also ended up heading
(13:09):
over to Italy, where her work flourished. Yeah, and it
is important to mention her because even though there isn't
a ton of stuff out there about her life, you know,
and her early years and her later years are sort
of in obscurity, this whole white Memorian flock was definitely
not literally white. She was a major part of this movement,
(13:29):
and she's both of African and Native American descent, something
that really played into her sculpture as well. And so
Louis studied at Oberlin thanks to financial support from her brother,
and trained to be a teacher, and her brother was
really encouraging of her education. He basically said, this is
how you're going to live a life that isn't basically
in a shack. You were going to make something of yourself.
(13:51):
But during her time in Oberlin, she was actually accused
of poisoning two of her classmates, and this fact of
her life's almost is as well known as her sculpture, unfortunately,
and she was captured and beaten by a white mob,
but the charges against her were eventually dropped. And it's
after this point that she moves to Boston and encounters
(14:12):
the abolitionist community. Yeah, and it's there that she befriends
sculptor Edward Brackett, who ends up becoming her teacher, and
she starts earning some small commercial success thanks to bus
of people like William Lloyd Garrison, notable abolitionists of the time,
as well as John Brown. But there's kind of an
(14:33):
icky scideivist as well, because abolitionists, for all of their
great intentions, obviously still used her as an example of
what African Americans could be capable of if given the chance,
and this earned Louis national and international press coverage. So yeah,
(14:53):
so it's it's great that she got so much attention,
but it is kind of your right gross that she
was used. She was propped up as this example of
what black people in America should be or could be,
kind of an exception to the rules exactly. Well, so
after this, she goes on to earn her first major
commercial success thanks to a bust of Colonel Robert gould Shaw.
(15:15):
After this point, she's able to move to Italy. She's
earned enough money and in Rome she encounters other female
artists and she gets to enjoy more social and artistic freedom.
She could fully participate in the international market for sculpture
and not just rely on abolitionist patronage because, like you said,
abolitionist community and Boston great intentions want to, you know,
(15:38):
free African Americans of the bonds of slavery. But she
was still kind of under their thumb if they were
the ones giving her all of the commissions. So in
Italy she could kind of make her own way. And
in eighteen sixties seven she creates her most famous work,
Forever Free, which is a sculpture of a black man
and woman leaving the bonds of slavery. And nine years
later she she shows her last major work, which is
(16:01):
the Death of Cleopatra at the Philadelphia Exposition. Yeah, and apparently,
I mean the significance of both of those pieces is
worth mentioning too, because Forever Free was sculpted to commemorate
the ratification of the thirteenth Amendment, so clearly there's a
lot of personal investment in that piece. But then when
(16:24):
it comes to the Death of Cleopatra, which depicts Cleopatra
sitting on her throne um, that was really her effort
to secure her place as a significant artist, to prove
that she was as good as all of the rest,
and she did, because she's definitely someone noteworthy in this
(16:46):
entire group of women, as is Vinny Reem, who studied
with sculptor Clark Mills in Washington, d C. Luigi Majoli
in Rome, and Leon Banant in Paris. So Luigi. She
studied with Luigi Luigi um not Mario. But in eighteen
sixty six, it's just eighteen years old. All Vinny here
(17:07):
was picked by Congress to sculpt a statue of Abraham Lincoln,
the significance being that she became the first female artist
commissioned to create a work of art for the federal government.
And she carves it in Rome out of Carrera marble,
and it's unveiled in d C in eighteen seventy one,
and it's gorgeous. You can you can see it on
(17:28):
the Google if you'd like to. And there's this quote
by then New York Legislator James Brooks on the Lincoln statue,
which starts off so glowing and then takes a turn
that sums up one of the main reasons we even
wanted to do this specific episode, So Brooks says, the
parthenon the Vatican, the great museums of Paris, Berlin, and
(17:52):
London show us no marble monuments. Bus North statues the
finger work of the fair sex, while here in this
rotundo we now see the equal rights of women are
not at the ballot box, but in the pencil, the chisel,
the artistic instruments to perpetuate the human form divine. Oh,
(18:19):
you were so close, James Brook. You you had me,
You had me until until, not until. Yeah, I'm I'm
not a sexist person, but but you're really better at
making sandwiches than decisions. Well, at least she can make
pretty things, which is basically his attitude. Well, he was
(18:39):
at least kinder in his view of women's artistic capability
than a lot of his male contemporaries, who were like, oh,
I mean they're kind of posers. Well, I mean, even
Vinnie's husband wasn't so great. So there's this. It's not
that she wasn't working during this time, but there's a
forty year, forty year, four decade gap between the Lincoln
(19:01):
unveiling and the completion of a statue of Iowa Governor
Samuel Jordan Kirkwood in the In the meantime, she had
been focusing on her life as a wife and a mother.
And that's fine, great, hooray, wife and mother. However, that's
because her husband, Lieutenant Richard Haxey, imposed restrictions on her sculpting.
Oh Hoxie, Oh oh Hoxy, Why you gotta be like that? Well,
(19:25):
now that we've spotlighted these three important women, we want
to kind of go back now and talk about how
this supposed flock came to be associated together and how
that fits into the broader culture regarding women an artistic
(19:45):
ambition at the time. Okay, so we named some names
for you. We talked a little bit about the history
behind women traveling to Europe to become artists, sculptors in particular,
and now we want to talk about how these women
even them together. I mean, obviously they're individuals. Obviously this
was not like a sculpting sorority. You know, they had
different interests and paths in life, but they also had
(20:08):
a lot in common in terms of what drew them
to Italy and what kept them there. And this is
coming from a paper by Sarah Fust Parrot called Networking
in Italy, Charlotte Cushman and the White Marmorian Flock. And
so Charlotte Cushman was one of America's first big name actresses,
if not the first American big name actress, and she
(20:28):
attracted a ton of female artists, not just sculptors, writers
and painters to to Italy in the eighteen fifties through
the eighteen seventies. So in eighteen fifty two, Cushman first
travels to Rome with Harriet Hosmer, and she ended up
connecting Hosmer with potential patrons and helped her out of
a bunch of money trouble, the awkward part being that
(20:50):
Kushman's romantic partner would temporarily leave her for Hosmer in
eighteen fifty four. But romantic things aside, Cushman had a
lot to do with with helping and supporting a out
of the sculptures and artists around her. Yeah, she flexed
her muscle constantly to advocate on behalf of sculptures and
partner Emma Stebbins, for instance, And so we have her
(21:12):
to thank for the Bethesda Fountain in New York Central
Park that Stevens sculpted. And she also kept in touch
with sculpture Florence Freeman's dubious mother via letters to ease
her mind about Freeman of being in Italy. And she
also organized a group purchase of one of Edmonia Lewis's
sculptures to help keep her working. And when I was
(21:35):
reading about Charlotte Cushman and her hardcore advocacy for women
supporting women specifically, I thought about our Shine Theory podcast.
I thought about len In. I mean, this was really
she was kind of the original Sheryl Sandberg with this
old school lean in group, just being really focused, singularly
(21:57):
focused on promoting other mail artists work and pulling strings
abroad to wealthy patrons saying hey you, okay, listen, I'm
Charlotte Kushman. I'm a really big deal. I know this sculptor.
You should buy one of her pieces to put in
your mansion. Why don't you do it? Andy'd be like, Oh,
that's a wonderful idea. Charlotte, well yeah, I mean she's
(22:18):
she's like lean In with a little bit of romantic
drama in there as well. Time to time. She was
also kind of in love with a lot of these
women also also just kind of came and went to
to some degree. I mean, Charlotte Kushman was, I mean,
she was in a pretty pretty plum pocisition. It seemed
like she was well you know, what Parent points out
is that Kushman was evidence that ambitious, artistic women didn't
(22:42):
have to sacrifice happiness and fulfillment in the domestic sphere
in favor of a career. And you know, Charlotte Cushman
is this masculine figure who'd never married, and she maintained
a quote unquote cherished celibacy. Wink wink, nudge, nudge. But
so instead of having to sacrifice one for the other,
she says, you know, we should band together. And and
(23:02):
she encouraged them to do this so that they could
take on tasks for one another that were traditionally delegated
two men to do. So, Hey, if you are out
working all night, I'll cook dinner for all of us.
Or if you're doing this, I'll help you know, purchase supplies.
And this really was not an unusual setup romantic relationships
or not. This is something that Vivian green Fried, Vanderbilt
(23:26):
art history professor, wrote about um in looking at the
relationships of these women. She said, nineteenth century white middle
class women often form their own gendered communities out of
necessity in a world comprising discreete male and female spheres,
composing a closed and intimate female world in which a
young girl like Hosmer grew towards womanhood under the tutelage
(23:47):
of an older woman like Kushman. But also interesting to
me too about Cushman was that I would have assumed
that she would have been this threatening figure to socialites
at the time because she was living such kind of
a transgressive kind of life, But it was just the opposite.
She was so beloved for the fact that she legitimated
(24:10):
a lot of American theatrical work at the time by
becoming that first big name stage actress, because previously only
British theater was considered true theater, and the Chicago Times
at one point described her as an ambassadress for America,
living abroad, showing Italians all these fancy people, because back then,
(24:35):
of course European culture was considered the culture, and so
they were like, oh, it's great that we have Cushman
over here, you know, kind of repping us to show that, hey, Americans,
they aren't so bad now. I thought the exact same
thing when I was reading that paper about Kushman. I
was just waiting for the whole thing of like and
everybody in America hated her too. Because she lived in
(24:55):
an alternative lifestyle. But yeah, it was exactly the opposite.
People were so excited that we had women like Kushman
and Harriet Hosmer kind of yeah, like you said, repping
for us that to show that, hey, we have cultured too,
We can we can provide high quality entertainment, art and culture. Um,
(25:16):
we don't just have to rely on people from other
countries to bring it to us. But at the same time,
women in America had to rely on going to another country,
specifically Italy at the time, in order to pursue their
artistic ambitions. And I was so pleased to learn that
the character Amy in Luisa may Alcott's Little Women was
(25:38):
based on her sister Mary, who pulled a Memorian flock.
She went to its study art in Italy because of
this whole trend that was happening, and it makes sense
Little Women came out in eighteen eighteen sixty eight. So,
I mean, if if you weren't familiar with this, you
actually might have been if you've read Little Women. Well,
(25:58):
I mean, but speaking of literature and characters in literature,
one character does play a large part in this because
you have to keep in mind that you know, traveling
to Italy wasn't something that just anybody and everybody got
to do, and you would often rely on literature to
kind of tell you what was going on, and novels
were even used to sort of guide books, because once
the upper crust read a particularly colorful novel about Italy
(26:21):
or France or whatever, they would basically follow that character's
footsteps through the town. And so Cushman's contemporaries actually associated
her with this character named Karine from the eighteen o
seven book karn or Italy. And in the book, the
Italian Karrine creates all of this amazing art through divine intervention,
which is interesting, and she ends up being crowned as
(26:43):
the best that Italian civilization has to offer, so sort
of a Cushman but in the art world. Um, but
she ultimately suffers for her success because you know, she
like flew too close to the sun. As a lady person,
Cushman didn't. She was super successful. She was very smart
with her money and where she spent it, and she
(27:04):
was able to free a lot of the other women
who followed her to Italy to pursue their own interests.
And because there was a lot of American investment and
interest in proving our cultural worth. At the time, women
traveling to Italy was acceptable. It was like, okay, well,
(27:24):
if you're going to do that, if you're going to
represent as well, I guess go and make your art
if you must, little woman. And in that paper, Parent
writes the very fact that many American women were pursuing
careers in Italy was interpreted by their contemporaries as an
indication of the expansiveness and vigor of American culture. So
not only was it okay, it was encouraged, and it
was also too though, as Parrot goes on to talk about,
(27:46):
indicative of the inadequacy of artistic training available in the US.
But this was really this was an interesting twist all
of it. We still believed that the character of American
womanhood was suppure ear to any other. So there was
kind of this our girls versus their girls thing going
on between America and Italy, where we were like, Okay,
(28:08):
you guys have all of this cultural superiority, Yes, but
we have superior women. So if we send them over
and then we combine the two, we win big time. Yeah,
it's a little bit of like Rockham stock'em Art World edition. Well,
but so what's up with this moniker? You know, we've
we've been talking about the more Marian flock. We touched
on what more Marian means and what it doesn't mean.
(28:30):
It doesn't mean boobs today. I'm sure boobs are part
of it, the part of why they were getting hated on.
But the moniker is definitely evidence of the way these
women were collectively across the board dismissed by a lot
of their contemporaries. And it starts with Scarlet Letter author
Nathaniel Hawthorne. So Hawthorne goes over to Italy with his wife,
(28:52):
who herself is a painter, and based on his experiences there,
he writes the novel A Marble Fawn in eighteen ft nine,
and that's based on his encounters with people including Hosmer
Lander and fellow sculptor William Wetmore Story, who sounds like
a wet blanket to play off of his middle name.
But it's this romanticized view of Americans seeking artistic training abroad,
(29:16):
and the plot involves female characters living outside of social
norms gasp. But he based his innocent character Hilda on
Hosmer interestingly, and the male protagonist Kenyon on story and
these characters in the book fall in love eventually, but
in real life that was not so much the case.
Yeah a, because Hosmer was likely a lesbian right and
(29:39):
be story in real life pretty much dismissed her. But
it's kind of clear in the way that he does
this that he's just completely intimidated by her talent. So
at one point he writes, Miss Hosmer is also to
say the word very willful and too independent by half,
and it's mixed up with a set whom I do
not and I can therefore do very little for her.
(30:03):
And he goes on to say she may or may
not have inventive powers as an artist, but if she
have will not, she'd be the first woman story. I
wanted to throw my laptop at a window when I
read that. I would she not be the first women
oh story, fighting words. Yeah. He describes as Mer as
(30:27):
one of the emancipated females who dwell there in heavenly unity,
which sounds amazing things well seriously, and continuing that theme,
he wrote that she would have the Romans know that
a Yankee girl can do anything she pleases. Walk alone,
ride her horse alone, and laugh at their rules. Again,
sounds amazing. So she can walk and ride a horse
(30:48):
that's so great by herself, by herself. And not only
is there that tone of insecurity, but there's also a
little bit of tone of like, I'm trying to save
her from these lesbians, and she just will not come
away with me. But author John Carlos wrote writing about
this relationship between Hawthorne Hasmer and author Henry James says
(31:08):
William's stories patronizing judgment of Heismer betrays his own fears
that Hosmer's artistic achievement and talent might be superior to
his own, as most modern artistorians agree. They were now
speaking of though the marble font. We mentioned the two
the two of the main characters, Hilda and Kenyan, but
(31:28):
there's also another female protagonist, Miriam, who was a little
bit of a mysterious figure, and she is based on
real life woman Margaret Fuller, who was an early American
feminist part of the Transcendental movement, also the first female
American foreign correspondent, who also while she was in Italy,
(31:50):
got pregnant, ended up marrying the guy and then on
their way back to the US died in a shipwreck,
and her death at the time was seen as proof
of the rash decision it would be for a woman
to pursue her artistic ambition. She was a cautionary tale
that Miriam was well. I mean, it's hard to believe
(32:11):
that Margaret Fuller's even real because her story just reads
like it's straight out of a novel from this period,
which is why she was Her life was such fodder
for Hawthorne. I mean, here's a woman who essentially lived
her life as what we would think of as a spinster,
goes to Italy, meets this younger guy who's like cut,
nothing going for him. I mean, how many of these
people did be dating college Like he's got nothing going
(32:31):
for him, but she's just like, you're hot, Like I
haven't been hanging out with dudes for a while, so like,
let's do this. They do it, gets pregnant, gets in
a shipwreck, all is lost, becomes the cautionary Yeah, it's
it's I'm people of that era. I'm sure they were like,
which I'm sure wouldn't rage her if she knew that,
(32:52):
I'm sure. But but so anyway, in this book that
was swirling around all of these um sculptors and sculptures.
Is Hawthorne used the term Marmorian to mean, you know,
resembling Marble, as in smoothness or hardness. But that term
is been taken by Henry James and applied to this
(33:16):
group of lady sculptors, and he definitely, you guys, meant
it to be dismissive. After all, he included the reference
in his book about William Wetmore's story, who, as we've
already established, was none too fond of these women, including Hosmer.
And after all, she is the only lady sculptor that
James mentioned in his book by name. Yeah, so the
(33:39):
whole White Memorian flock thing comes from this passage in
Henry James's book that goes a leg this stories. Patty is,
of course Miss Harriet Hosmer, the most eminent member of
that strange sisterhood of American ladies sculptors who at one
time settled upon the Seven Hills in a White Memorian flock.
(34:02):
Their rise, their prosperity, their subsistence are in presence of
some of the widely scattered monuments of their reign. Things
likely to lead us into bipaths, queer, and crooked, so
just all sorts of like really awesome things to say
about women. But yeah, he's he's dismissing these women as birds. Yeah,
(34:23):
like they're just they're just white, cold, lesbian birds that
I hate and resent. And he also mentions at Monia Lewis,
though not by name, when he writes one of the Sisterhood,
if I'm not mistaken, was a negress whose color, picturesquely
contrasting with that of her plastic material, was the pleading
(34:43):
agent of her fame. Yeah, and if you keep in
mind that Henry James, you know, was not too fond
of women in general who weren't inside the home. I mean,
in other books of his he drew these unspoken parallels
between female copyists, the women who would, for instance, go
to museums or galleries and paint what they saw and
(35:05):
prostitutes good grief, I know, good grief. So so Hawthorne
and James obviously did not hold these women in terribly
high esteem, although I would be willing to guess that
Hawthorne was like a little more okay with that, I
would hope. So, considering that his wife Sophia was an artist,
although once they got married, she for the most part
kind of had to pack away her canvases. Yeah, I've
(35:26):
gotta love that stuff. But so, what was the what
was the general consensus about these ladies. Well, like you
said that they were one monolithic group, they're kind of
lumped together rather than being seen as individuals with individual talent.
And a lot of the articles also focused on personalities, appearing,
(35:51):
and a lot of articles also focused on personalities, appearances,
behaviors rather than their work, which is something that we
still see so often today in profiles of accomplished women. Yeah,
big time. How many magazine articles have you read about
a woman that starts off describing what she's wearing and
what she's eating? So many, especially if she is really attractive,
(36:13):
conventionally attractive and finn it'll start off with what she's eating.
If she's not as conventionally attractive, probably what she's wearing. Yeah, yeah,
I love it. Um. Well. So in eighteen sixties six
freelance correspondent Henry Referred reporting back on this Mormorian flock
departs from the bird reference and describes them as a
(36:33):
fair constellation of twelve stars of greater or lesser magnitude
who shed their soft and humanizing influence on a profession
which has done so much for the refinement and civilization
of man. I mean that doesn't sound so condescending, but
it is still. I mean, it's limited. Obviously, they're they're
(36:53):
this discreet constellation of twelve stars and that's it. Yeah, yeah,
why why go and go into it any further? And
we could also say that about American writer and art
critic Henry Tuckerman, who, in his six hundred page volume
about art, dedicated just five pages to all of these
American female sculptors. His take that the public appreciation of
(37:18):
their arts seemed to come from quote national deference to
and sympathy with the sex, and from quote a lack
of understanding about art in general. So basically, if you
appear to appreciate any of these sculptures that are being
created by these women, you are probably just feel a
little bad for them because they're women, and how nice
for them that they're struggling, or you just don't get art.
(37:41):
And I want to give him this a tiny past
because his six hundred page volume was coming out in
eighteen sixty seven. But still, Puckerman, uh, pretty and he
was also to living in Italy, so he was right
in the midst of this and still thumbed his knows
at these transgressive women as they were often considered by
(38:04):
the wealthy travelers who would go through these Italian roots
to see all these studios um and the other sites abroad,
who would always want to look into these Mermorian flock
studios to see like, well, what does it even look
like for a woman to be working like this? Yeah,
because you know, I mentioned earlier that a lot of
the novels of the era were used almost as travel guides,
(38:26):
and this is also true for Hawthorne's The Marble Fon
that he described so intricately all of these different sites
and artworks and people in his book that when American
tourists would come to Italy, they would either have in
hand or purchase a copy of his book that had
places where you could insert postcards and pictures when you
(38:49):
went to the exact same spot. Oh my god, it's
like they eat prey, love twitter. It is. And you know,
by a large the medium in general was considered inappropriate
for women of this time, like painting and sketching. That's
totally cool, except if you're Henry James, and you think
that women who sketch in the museum or prostitutes. But um,
(39:12):
it's essentially the fact that they're using these difficult and
dirty materials and they have to exert themselves to manipulate
the stone. Um that they ended up inhabiting this essentially
masculine realm. And this made a lot of the contemporaries,
the artist contemporaries uneasy. Yeah, there was a lot of
scandal actually that broke out, for instance, around Hosmer's Zenobia sculpture,
(39:37):
because it received all of this critical acclaim. But then
there was this backlash among some people who said, well,
she has all of these these Italian workmen who are
doing the chiseling for her, which was the case for
male sculptures at the time as well. There was a
lot of resistance just to even even allowing women to
succeed in this field, right exactly because after all, you know,
(40:00):
you mentioned the commission thing earlier, it was totally unfeminine
for women to try to pursue a commission. Um. But
the artist did a lot of them did work to
counter this whole negative perception by portraying themselves as that
whole Ambassador to Europe thing, ambassador. Yes, The ambassador asked like, no, no, no,
(40:21):
we're not. We're not trying to further our own careers.
We're just trying to be ambassadors to America. We're women
were communal minded, um, and we to have to mention
that there was probably some latent homophobia going on as well,
because a lot of these women were living in kind
of lesbian arrangements. The euphemism for at the time was
(40:43):
a Boston marriage, which was really exemplified by Anne Whitney,
who was the sculpture at the time. She was older
and not as successful as a Harriet and hose Mur
for instance, but she and her partner Adeline Manning lived
in a quote unquote Boston marriage or decades and when
Manning died or I guess after Okay, so Manning died first,
(41:06):
then Whitney died, and they wanted to be they were
supposed to be buried next to each other as well,
and kind of had to fight for that. Well, Manning's
family ended up, yeah, making sure that that happened, that
they were buried together, but partners, well, yeah, And so
I mean, not only were these women living outside the
normal bounds of matrimony and motherhood, but they were also
(41:26):
pursuing careers and living in these situations with other women,
which yes, sometimes they were so called Boston marriages, and
sometimes they were all just living together to do what
Kushman envisioned and sort of support one another. And you know,
the reports that came back of these women living together
in a spinster like fashion were always okay. It's always
okay if they're just older women who never married and
(41:49):
their spinsters, and that's fine. Even those romantic friendships that
we've talked before, especially in our episode on women's colleges,
like that was still okay. But once you were actually
refer drying to another woman as your wife, or saying
that you were her hubby in Hosmer's case, and actually
displaying any public displays of affection or actual sexual desires,
(42:11):
that was not okay. And so this group was just
sort of a microcosm of everything that made people so
uncomfortable at the time, especially with women. But I do
think that we women today have a lot that we
can learn from this group of artists that I don't
feel like we can call a white memorial flog because
(42:31):
it was a dismissive term for them at the time,
because I mean, they really dug their heels in and
got so into the concept of the importance of networking,
supporting each other, not allowing jealousy to get in the
way of each other's ambition and career achievements. It's really
inspirational in a lot of ways. It is inspirational and
(42:54):
I'd love to sculpt something, but I just never took
that class. Caroline, you still can get a ticket to
a pick up a copy of the Marble Phone and go.
I know I need to. I'll be your patron. I
have no money, but I'll be your spiritual Thanks. Okay, Well,
(43:14):
we are really curious to hear from listeners about this.
I'm wondering if there are any sort of expat artistic
types listening to this podcast right now in a far
away place. I know we have some some traveling listeners,
because I know that this was also inspirational for me
in terms of the importance of getting outside of your
own backyard every now and then and how and how
(43:37):
invigorating that can be creatively as well. So let us
know your thoughts about sculpture. Women aren't ambition and kind
of the conflict that poses sometimes to women's roles and quotes.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
email address. You can tweet us at mom stuff podcasts,
(43:57):
or messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of
messages that are with you right now. I have a
letter here from Katie about our slut shaming episode. She says, well,
I don't have a grand scheme to rid our culture
of slut shaming. I do have an anecdote that y'all
might find interesting. When Rush Limbaugh made his infamous slut
(44:18):
comments about Sandra Fluke and birth control, I happened to
be a recent college grad working in the DC office
of a female Republican senator, and I was one of
the three people who answered most of the phone calls
after the Sandra Fluke comments. We received some of the
most hate filled, verbally abusive phone calls I have ever heard.
People called in from all over the country to call
(44:39):
us the senator's whors, sluts, and a thousand other things
that I'd rather not relay. While it was office policy
that we could hang up on any verbally abusive caller
after eight hours of hundreds of abusive calls, and they
were pretty much constant for days after those comments. We
were all pretty shell shocked. Even now three years later,
(45:00):
it's one of the worst working weeks I've ever had.
No one in our office supported rush Lamba's comments, including
the Senator, but so much ire was taken out on us.
Now I realized that the people who work in the
offices of senators and other elected officials are there to
facilitate communication between the official and constituents. But my advice
or please for anyone who chooses to call on an
(45:21):
issue is please, please please remember that the person on
the other end of the phone is a person. They're
an actual human being. This is broader than the reactionary
splut shaming or verbally abuse of calls we got on
that one issue, but it's something that played out over
and over again in my time there. A really good
rule of thumb is to ask yourself, would I talk
like this if I was looking at this person's face
(45:44):
Most of the time, the shouty, sweary name calling would
never happen in person. A phone call shouldn't be any difference,
And I'm pretty sure this holds for YouTube comments too. Anyway,
that's my little soapbox moment. For the record, I'd rather
not reclaim the word slut. I just prefer that we
stopped using it all together. So thank you, Katie. Yeah,
we've heard so much about the slut shaming episode and
(46:07):
still are getting letters about it, and same thing with
the podcast Stalking one oh one. And I've got a
letter here from someone I'm going to keep anonymous to
protect her privacy, who writes I was the victim of
a stalker. He was my ex boyfriend. This was pretty
soon after our breakup. I really didn't know who was
stalking me. I would receive daily threatening emails and one
(46:28):
night came home to a rock through the window. I
was rooming with my best friend who owned the house,
and I spoke to the police and he told me
was probably my ex. And somehow I got connected to
a wonderful detective who worked to find the address these
emails for coming from, and he eventually traced them back
to my ex. I told my family in my workplace.
My family blamed me for introducing this man into my life.
(46:51):
Every day I felt guilt, shame, and overall disbelief that
I had gotten myself into situation, and every day my
family reminded me that you should have known better, and
I couldn't take it. For a month, I slept on
a couch at my friend's house. We weren't close because
most of my close friends didn't even want to risk
their own safety by having me there. At work, my
boss wanted me fired. She said I could no longer
(47:13):
perform my work duties due to the fear I had
of my stalker. Oh yeah, and according to her, I
was putting everyone at risk. Luckily, her director let me
work from another office. I went on and got a
temporary restraining order. The police were never able to find
him and give it to him. When I went to
my permanent hearing, he wasn't there and the court said
they could go no further. Once he knew I contacted
the police, he never bothered me again, only left me
(47:34):
a bag at work with pictures and a letter saying
he was moving away. I know I did the right
thing contacting the police, and I'm grateful to the officer
that helped me. I'm ever grateful to my friend who
gave me his couch and only listened. But it's still
a challenge dealing with the shame I feel about the
whole event. Now only a few close friends know what happened.
The event also changed my relationship with my family. I
(47:55):
share it with no one and often wonder if I
pop up somewhere as having filed a restraining order. I'm
also grateful to the few people who didn't judge me
and just supported me. Hopefully I can be that person
to someone else. So I wanted to share that story
because we've heard a lot of things like this, just
to emphasize, like, what really happens in these kinds of situations,
(48:17):
And if you have a friend or a family member,
even an acquaintance who's going through this, I have some
kindness and compassion. So with that, send us your emails.
Mom stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
address and for links to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts,
including this one with links to more fascinating sources about
(48:40):
these ladies. Sculpture says, head on over to stuff Mom
Never Told You dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics because it has stuff works dot com.
Five
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
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Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
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